Ranking Real Madrid’s top five players before the season starts

4. Thibaut Courtois

On number four, is a man who is arguably the personified form of consistency. Thibaut Courtois clocked the most minutes for Real Madrid in the past season. He was an absolute wall in defense for the Whites who maintained his consistency every single time out. He registered a whopping 51 appearances for the club and that is an enormous amount of matches to play in a single season of club football.

Playing behind a defense plagued by injuries, the Belgian maintained an 81.1 percent successful saves in La Liga. He conceded only 28 goals of the 111 shots that he faced on target, per FBref. He ended with 17 clean sheets in the league just one behind Atletico Madrid’s Jan Oblak, the golden glove winner. For the majority of the times that Real Madrid conceded, the 29-year-old wasn’t at fault. He thus goes into the new season as the best campaigner between the sticks for Real Madrid.

This season though, Courtois’s role would be yet more crucial. He would be playing behind a defense without Sergio Ramos or Raphael Varane. There would be no other option on Don Carlo’s mind and it can only be predicted that Courtois would be featuring more often than not in Real’s league games, unless an injury problem sets in, which is the last thing Madridistas would hope for. We need our Belgian stopper in top form.

Courtois also had a decent Euro campaign and he did feature in the friendly against AC Milan where he had nothing much to do. In hindsight, Andrey Lunin has looked very sharp in the preseason and he can be expected to feature in the Copa del Rey or against weaker oppositions.